Source: Atlas Obscura
Franz Kafka’s face is ubiquitous in his hometown of Prague. In the Czech city’s Old Town, a large statue depicts the writer riding what appears to be a suit without an owner. Downtown, close to where Kafka once worked at an insurance company, David Černý’s mirrored bust of the author rotates using the same processes as traditional Czech clockwork.
Then there are the sites where visitors can experience Kafka’s Prague. The Café Louvre (opened in 1902 and still serving guests today) was once a gathering place for philosophers and intellectuals like Kafka. Café Savoy (established in 1893 and also still in business) used to host Yiddish theater presentations that Kafka was known to frequent.
Kafka himself had a conflicted relationship with Prague, as a German-speaking Jew in a Czech Catholic city. He was famously quoted as saying of the city’s allure: “Prague never lets you go… this dear little mother has sharp claws.” As evidenced by the streets, squares, plaques, and souvenirs– not to mention institutions such as the Franz Kafka Museum or the Franz Kafka Society (just behind the Franz Kafka Bookstore)– the city is less ambivalent about its native son.
But Kafka’s palpable presence in the city likely wouldn’t exist were it not for the persistence of the author’s friend and literary executor, Max Brod. In publishing many of Kafka’s most beloved works posthumously, Brod disregarded the author’s wishes and single-handedly expanded Kafka’s fame. Even more poignant is that in one pivotal period of time, a substantial amount of Kafka’s work was contained within a single one of Brod’s suitcases.
In 1902, Kafka met Max Brod while they were studying law together at Charles University in Prague. The two became fast friends through their shared passion for literature and their similar backgrounds (Brod, too, was a German-speaking Jew who had grown up in Prague). The two became so close that when Max Brod was excluded from Kafka’s philosophical circle at Cafe…
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